I’ve always woken early on polling day, taken my card to the school, church hall or scout hut that’s been commandeered for the day, and purposefully put my cross or numbers next to my preferred candidate. The stiff ceremony of those five minutes never dulls: knowing that the mark you make with the pencil provided is your physical mark on our democracy is uniquely pleasurable. Then there’s the slight anti-climax you feel once you’ve posted your slip into the ballot box, tempered by wondering how those walking in as you leave will vote.

And I thought about why we are all so unenthused about this election. During the anti-SPUC pro-choice demo last Saturday, while standing around Lothian Road defending a woman’s right to choose, we talked about the upcoming elections – a bunch of politically-minded, engaged, informed, and responsible people – and found that we were all feeling an entire lack of enthusiasm about the candidates we had to vote for and the expected results no matter who we voted for. None of us except myself were actively hoping for any one person’s success today, and my own quixotic support for an Independent in another ward is admittedly out of character for me – tribal Lefty since before I could vote.Continue reading →

In 2002, I was living in a small flat on Albert Street, a stair with about a dozen other households. We and our neighbours in the next stair had been issued a statutory repairs letter, and from what I could judge of the building frontage, it was justified: one of my next-door neighbours on the same landing said that repairs hadn’t been done in 20 years.

The three of us on the same landing were on pretty good terms: we agreed that it would be cheaper if everyone on the stairs could get together and agree on a builder and repair work, but that would mean one person in effect guaranteeing the whole bill, and chasing up the other occupants – and the landlords of rented flats – to pay their share.

Everyone knew – we agreed – that it was more expensive if you let the council do it. We assumed this was because the council would always charge a bit extra on the top to cover their administrative costs and the surveyor costs, and because the council wouldn’t be concerned in picking out a builder who would carry out the best work at the lowest cost: why should they, when all the costs would be passed on to us.

But the scale of the scam that has been practiced on us is unbelievable:

It will take more than two years to investigate the first 500 complaints received by the council, and for the level of overcharging to be confirmed, but provisional totals are now being considered behind closed doors, according to a senior council source.

The first “working estimate” is of an overcharge of £13.5m, based on a figure of 10% of the value of building repairs contracts since 2005.

The investigation is currently going back five years. I paid the bill for my flat in 2003, and sold it in 2004. 18 staff have been suspended from the department and five were sacked: apparently more disciplinary measures are expected, as well as criminal charges. (That’s one more sacking and 3 more suspensions since 1st December, according to the BBC’s story then.)

I now live in a colony flat, where generally, repair bills are shared between at most four households, all of us close neighbours. But thousands of people in Edinburgh live in stairs where they must rely on the council to carry out this repair work fairly, because it’s unreasonable to expect a single household to guarantee the whole cost and pursue neighbours to pay their share.